Appropriating Obama’s parables
Pundits had suggested Barack Obama would be harsh on African leaders as president. But he only spoke to African leaders in parables recently. He is wise. For Chinua Achebe wrote that parable is the oil with which words are eaten. Bitter words, that is. And it’s even more fitting that Obama spoke on African soil. […]
Pundits had suggested Barack Obama would be harsh on African leaders as president. But he only spoke to African leaders in parables recently. He is wise. For Chinua Achebe wrote that parable is the oil with which words are eaten. Bitter words, that is. And it’s even more fitting that Obama spoke on African soil. One, no wise man looks elders in the face and speaks to them harshly here. Two, elders here understand parables as much as they do the real thing. That means Obama’s parables got to where he intended.
When the US president came to Ghana, he said Africa doesn’t need strong leaders but strong institutions. He should know. What keeps America going are its institutions – the Executive, virile legislature, the judiciary, the media and other agencies such as the electoral body that are, to a large extent, immune to political interferences. Obama also alluded to some of the unwholesome practices engaged in by leaders. He believes these are the causes of the multifaceted problems confronting nations on the continent. Importantly, he mentioned electoral fraud. He also mentioned corruption and other sundry items that make the continent not so investor-friendly. Yet investment is one thing needed to pull countries here out of their many problems.
This first African American president spoke in parables to no one in particular. Yet those he spoke to knew themselves. Never mind the silence from corridors of power across the continent since he delivered his address several days back. Presidents and Prime Ministers had laid back on the executive chairs in offices from Cairo to Johannesburg, from Banjul to Addis Ababa and from Tripoli to Abuja and focused attention on their TV screens while Obama spoke. Should any of the occupants of these offices feel the pinch in those parables in which the speaker mentioned no names but gave enough imagery as expected of a man writing a piece of poetry? Yes.
There is a man in Cairo who has spent some three decades and is rumoured as -preparing his son to succeed him. There is also the leader who turned his back while his people were being murdered in Darfur . Then the one in Zimbabwe who was a hero in 1980 but has become a villain in 2009. There is a man in Banjul who arrived power with the gun. He is in civilian robe at the moment but doesn’t appear as if any term limit would send him packing in a jiffy. He has an accomplice in Burkina Faso. Niger is saddled with a man who should be preparing to go but has set himself up to stay. Great nation Nigeria. Two years after the start of a tenure during which no one sees anything on ground except on billboards and adverts in the media, leaders at various levels are preparing for second term in office. Their neighbour in Yaoundé will spend more than thirty years in power before he would consider leaving. That is if he doesn’t go the way of the way of Mobutu Sekou of Congo Kinshasa first.
Ajibade is a consultant writer based in Abuja. [email protected]